Synergetic effect of carbon sphere derived from yeast with magnetism and cobalt oxide nanochains towards improving photodegradation activity for various pollutants

•Using yeast as carbon precursor, the Fe3O4@C/Co3O4 photocatalyst with magnetism is firstly synthesized by a facile synthetic strategy.•It exhibits the universal enhanced photocatalytic activity for removing various pollutants in water.•Synergetic effect of carbon sphere and cobalt oxide nanochains facilitates the transfer and separation of charge carriers effectively.•This work launches an exemplificative strategy for developing ordinary raw materials as carbon source in photocatalytic reaction system.

Developing high-efficiency and low-cost semiconductor photocatalysts with carbon layer modification has been proved to possess the potential advantage for dramatically improved photocatalytic performance in recent years. Here, a novel magnetic core-shell Fe3O4@C modified with Co3O4 nanochains photocatalyst (Fe3O4@C/Co3O4) is first constructed via a facile synthetic strategy using inexpensive and ordinary yeast as carbon source. The obtained composite structure is conducive to the transfer and separation of charge carriers due to the synergetic effect of carbon layer and Co3O4 nanochains. In consequence, the photodegradation activity of various pollutants is significantly enhanced relative to that of pure Co3O4 under visible light irradiation. Moreover, the introduction of magnetic materials makes this photocatalyst recycled easily by an external magnetic field and reused effectively without obvious activity loss. This work may provide a feasibility analysis and exemplificative strategy for using simple raw materials as carbon source to observably improve universal photocatalytic activity of composite semiconductor photocatalyst.

Graphical abstractThe magnetic core-shell Fe3O4@C modified with Co3O4 nanochains photocatalyst (Fe3O4@C/Co3O4) is first constructed using inexpensive and ordinary yeast as carbon source for the first time, which presents the enhanced universal photocatalytic activity for removing various contaminants in water compared with the pristine Co3O4 under visible-light irradiation.Download high-res image (185KB)Download full-size image